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Sea Skimmer wrote:plus the 25mm cannon which isn’t very effective at multi kilometer ranges.

Actually, while 25mm is marginal for scoring kills against T-55s at range; it should be more than enough to kill baldricks.

I greatly anticipate the coming battle. Good job on having Abrigor THINK instead of sticking to a flawed plan.

By the way, what the hell is a Mick-vee? An IFV?

The Vortex Empire wrote:Well, Abigor is learning. I wonder how our forces will deal with a 15 mile wide wave of baldricks.

Aerial bombardment. A MOAB or the Russian Father of All Bombs should put an end to any thought of flanking the human forces.

Mick-vee = MICV = M2 Bradley or BMP or whatnot.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's orbiting B-52s loaded with JDAMs when the battle starts. Harpies may be aerial, but they're sure to run out of O2 at 50k feet. If it all goes pear shaped, rain of bombs will do much to thin out the ranks of the Baldricks.

Anyway, there's no evidence that Baldricks can do anything to hurt a speeding M1. The only semi-effective weaponry they've shown is the ball-lightning, which is almost certainly lethal against infantry, but is shown to be fairly worthless against tanks at the level of power we've seen. "Hey, they go squish!"

Aren't long lines of infantry just asking to be carpet-bombed?

Now that the majority of the Harpies have been swiped from the skies, it might be a good time to deploy helicopter gunships and other such fun assets (particularly with the line spread out like it is - whatever Harpies are left can only be in one place at the same time.)

Not sure how helos would fare against those demon zapsticks though.

Send in the A-10's! They usually are painted with fierce grins and eyes that might make the Demons actually think they are under attack from the humans own version of harpies or something

Plus they can carry a rather awful amount of cluster bombs to back up their cannon. And they're fast enough to get out of dodge if Harpies come after them.

Load the A-10 with all red tracers and use them at night. It's spitting molten lead!

If the Harpie threat is neutralized, I think the Spectre's also should come out and play

Remember, you don't want to give away all your capabilities at once.

if it really is a 15 mile 'line' its begging to be strafed of carpet bombed as mentioned.

if the specters come into play they won't even have to pylon turn, just run down one face then turn around and hit them from the other. like a constant rectangle course that slides sideways at demonic walking/running pace.

even more fun if you've got multiple birds doing it at once, the first could be turning around after it's first pass to hit the other side while a second starts it's own first pass.

Again, I suspect Petraeus will want to hold back his air power from the ground-attack role unless it becomes strictly necessary.

For instance, if that enormous frontage of Baldricks DOES start to outflank them in some areas, I suspect that he would authorize limited airstrikes on just those elements that are broken free from the rest and threatening the Allied flanks or rear. And by "limited airstrikes", I mean "no survivors in that unit to tell the tale of how Human Sky Chariots rain fire and brimstone down upon demons on the ground."

Nice, but the fact that there are still 98% of the demons left and twice that in angels scares me...

That's actually one of the beautiful things about the B-52s dropping JDAMs: they'll fly high enough that not only will the Baldricks not be able to engage them, but the Baldricks might not even see them. If they do, it's probably as a mere speck, and they won't see the bombs falling. It's just more strange human magic.

MKSheppard wrote:Abgihor is smart; but he's fatally limited by the speed of his communications network; look how long it took for news to reach his HQ; and then for a response to reach the frontline units.

I wonder if they could use that demon bioelectricity-thing as a communications device. Gather a bunch of signaler demons and have them go zappy-zappy and stuff. Sort of like using flashlights for morse code.

If Abrigor does that, then he is a genius!

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I wonder if they could use that demon bioelectricity-thing as a communications device. Gather a bunch of signaler demons and have them go zappy-zappy and stuff. Sort of like using flashlights for morse code.

Actually we know there are quite a few Demons that are telepathic, so they already have a very good functional radio equivalent if they employ it competently. Indeed, I find the Demons' reliance on messengers rather puzzling in this respect. Even if only one in a few dozen Demons is telepathic they should have Command and Control equal to early twentieth century armies. If all of them are... God help us we should be the horse and buggy people in this area, not them; with a little skill they could practically turn the army into a hive mind.

The problem is that their telepathy is line-of-sight only, so over long ranges the only way to get a message through like that is to create a chain of demons. Of course, if you've ever played "Telephone" as a child, you know how well that will work, especially involving the various stresses of war. Getting the message "Hold off on the assault" garbled into "Hold the assault at all costs" is the sort of thing that gets armies wiped out. By sending an actual physical message and messengers that go straight to the various commanders, you're ensuring that there is no message decay.

They don't need line of sight to telepathically contact the Nephilim though. Maybe they could figure out something using the Nephilim as receiving stations.

Aranfan wrote:They don't need line of sight to telepathically contact the Nephilim though. Maybe they could figure out something using the Nephilim as receiving stations.

Yes, but they need to locate and secure enough Nephilim to do so - and you can be sure that any human located amongst the Baldrick army would be an instant target for a Hellfire.

Sure, they're innocent, and they'll die, but they'll 'just' go to Hell.

The saddest thing about Hell's military is that Abigor is probably their best general, I give him five battles at most until he is well versed in modern warfare, but because of the way Hell works and how those five battles will all be defeats, Abigor is going to be replaced for "incompetence". And no other General of Hell will even have a chance.

The funny thing is if it wasn't the scholarly Petraeus but a political hack as claimed earlier, airpower would've been too heavily relied on and probably insufficient to halt the Baldricks. A-10's, helicopters, AC-130 would've all been attrited by the harpies and we'd be looking at the first overrun American units since the Vietnam war. It was and still is possible to lose.

I know it is kind of off-topic but I'm very happy with the way Petraeus is being depicted here, both in a story sense and compared to him in real life. For one, he's the first brass with enough brain matter in his head to realize speeding by in a humvee doesn't accomplish counter-insurgency goals. Anybody who isn't convinced should read the counter-insurgency manual. He actually makes me feel that the 50 years for peace in Iraq could be accomplished (whether Americans should or want to pay the price of 100 years is a whole other story.)

I can't imagine any other recent American commander having the brains to realize the difficulties Patraeus is in this story. They would all rely on shock and awe, quick decisive victory, and drown in their own overconfidence.

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Can anyone tell me how an advancing 15-mile-long infantry front compares to modern warfare? Especially given the modest size of Petraeus' forces, what is the real danger/chance of the demons being able to close to 'punching range' with tanks?

Depends. Modern US doctrine would have you punching some holes in it, separating it out while you surround and defeat individual segments in detail.

By Russian/WWII standards, it's a SHORT front.

In this case, I could see deliberately targeting one end of the line and rolling it up while troops from the far end attempt to reach the action, but generally only trickling in, leaving them with insufficient mass to reach the forces attacking.

Bringing up the Russians, I really wonder what their (real-life) modern armored warfare tactics are like. I mean, since Duchess and Shep have mentioned that in WWII, their fronts were like...incredibly HUEG. And that in light of a ground war with the Soviets, NATO even fielded tactical atomics...

Goddamn I want to see Russia take on Hell! With politician dudes reading Putin's speeches to felled demons. And Putin assigning members of the Russian Mafia to rule Hell! Mang!

brianeyci wrote:I can't imagine any other recent American commander having the brains to realize the difficulties Patraeus is in this story. They would all rely on shock and awe, quick decisive victory, and drown in their own overconfidence.

Actually, the standard American military officer tends to think of war as an engineering exercise; the ultimate example of this would be Curtis LeMay who was a Civil Engineer.

This was by large not something that was limited to a few officers; it's a mindset that percolates through the American experience of armed conflict, which I suppose is a result of West Point being an engineering school first and foremost (I guess back in 1802, people worried about us training a corps of military officers who with nothing to do would coup the government), so that the officers would have something to do other than military coups. Many of our Civil War leaders spent their antebellum careers doing all sorts of engineering jobs and running companies before they were recalled to the colors.

Contrast this with Sandhurst, which pretty much existed for most of it's history as a finishing school for the lesser nobility of the Empire.

In a way, it's really ironic; the Soviet Way of War, with it's carefully calculated methodology (it shall take two units of 152mm fire to kill 30% of defenders in a fortified position) is war as a scientific problem to be solved; very much like our way of war; which is to put so much firepower on the enemy that he dies before we have to assault him....

A more "conventional" American General would have called up pretty much everything he had at his disposal which wasn't nuclear; and hit the Baldricks with everything at once; like B-52s flying so high they're invisible unloading lines of bombs marching across the enemy lines; C-17s dropping MOABs. The idea would be to kill so much of the enemy force so fast that Hell is asking "What just happened to Abhigor? Where is his army?" after a few hours of combat.

My question is would it have worked...it seems logical to me...but others here with way more experience and knowledge seem to think it would have been a disaster.